AI-powered, anti-money laundering, and counter-terrorism financing startup, Silent Eight, raised an oversubscribed series A round worth US$6.2 million round. This comes in as banks and financial institutions face increased scrutiny from regulators.
The round was led by existing investor Wavemaker Partners. They are an early-stage venture capital firm focused on enterprise and deep tech startups. Other participating investors include SC Ventures, Standard Chartered ’s innovation, fintech investment, and venture arm, and OTB Ventures, as well as existing investors.
The fresh capital from this round will be used to hire new employees to support a strong pipeline of customers comprising large banks and insurance companies. The company is hiring for its offices in Singapore, Warsaw, London, and New York and plans to double the headcount by the end of Q1 next year.
“Silent Eight’s solution learns how people make decisions – both good and bad ones. Its transparent design allows our customers to pick best practices and use them in real life, and discard bad practices and behavior that leads to mistakes. Silent Eight can also explain the reasoning behind every decision the solution makes in plain English. This is the perfect design for use cases where stakes are very high and there is no room for mistakes,” said CEO and co-founder Martin Markiewicz.
Financial firms have paid at least US$28.4B in fines for money laundering and sanctions violations since 2008, according to The Economist. And compliance is becoming an increasingly strategic function after the financial crisis. Ongoing trade wars around the world have also resulted in increased complications and sanctions.
Also read: New developments in fintech are hitting Southeast Asia in waves
A testament to Silent Eight’s enterprise success is Standard Chartered’s investment in this new round. They are Silent Eight’s most significant live deployment. Implemented in 2018, Silent Eight is optimizing the Standard Chartered’s name screening
process at scale: across all business lines, in over 40 markets, including the US, UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
With this new fundraising, Paul Santos, Managing Partner of Wavemaker Partners Southeast Asia, has joined Silent Eight’s Board of Directors: “Year after year, banks continue to face increased scrutiny and regulations. An artificial intelligence-powered engine like Silent Eight is the most effective solution to weed out money laundering and terrorist financing and reduce manpower and compliance risks. Their track record and pipeline speak for themselves. Now, Silent Eight is expanding very quickly.”
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